Microsoft’s $100-per-app bounty is both too much and not enough

Cash incentive scheme seems unlikely to attract the right developers.

Publish an app in the Windows Store by June 30 and Microsoft will give you a $100 Visa card. Developers can submit up to 20 applications for a total of $2,000 in rewards.

The limited-time offer started on March 8 before being spotted by the Verge this week.

Apart from a few terms and conditions—most notably, that participants must be at least 18 and must live in the US—the scheme is straightforward. Developers must pay the $49 (for individuals) or $99 (for companies) fee to be listed on the store. The offer applies both to Windows Phone apps submitted to the Windows Phone app store and Windows 8 Metro-style apps.

As promotions go, this is an odd one.

Paying developers to develop for your platform is a risky business. It's not something that happens in a healthy app ecosystem (it's unlikely that Apple or Google is having to give out cash to coax developers onto their respective platforms, and Microsoft certainly isn't paying people to write Windows desktop applications). The mere fact that Microsoft is doing it is an indicator that perhaps the company isn't happy with the number of apps in the Windows Store.

In an argument put forward by former Microsoft employee Charlie Kindel (who led the company's developer outreach efforts for Windows Phone 7), it does more than reflect a wilting app market. This move attracts developers who aren't particularly invested in the success of the platform (and hence in the quality and support of their applications), but are trying to make a fast buck from cranking out simple applications.

However, such payments can be useful for priming the pump of a new app ecosystem. Microsoft has arguably had some success thus far in bulking up Windows Phone's app marketplace through offering incentives to developers. And BlackBerry has offered $10,000 bounties for apps developed for BlackBerry 10 (though this is not a blanket offer; apps must generate $1,000 of revenue in order to qualify).

If the Windows Store is struggling to attract good applications, then in spite of the downsides of an incentive scheme—indifferent developers, and the negative perception it creates—an incentive scheme might be a necessary evil. If the result is a thriving store chock full of high quality apps several months down the line, it would be money well spent.

But Microsoft's $100 per app scheme seems flawed on that basis, too. $100 buys a few hours of development time, if that. $100 will cover the annual subscription to publish in the Store (or two years of subscription for individuals), but it's hardly a reason to write an application.

The only apps that could credibly be developed for that kind of budget are the cookie-cutter clone apps, such as the "e-books as applications" that clutter up Apple's App Store. That kind of application is developed once, then replicated dozens of times, simply putting in a different book's text for each version.

BlackBerry's scheme seems much wiser. The $1,000 threshold means that the apps have to have some amount of quality, and the $10,000 reward is arguably high enough to at least encourage highly motivated hobbyists.

As such, while Microsoft's promotion may stir some developers into providing quantity, it's highly unlikely to yield any kind of quality. It's simply not enough money.

Enlarge/ The Windows 8 Twitter application is a pleasing marriage of Twitter's branding and the Metro look and feel.

The Windows Store is certainly short on apps, but that's not a simple numbers game. It's short on good apps. There are some small positive signs—a week ago an official Twitter app was released and it's really rather nice—but well-designed, useful pieces of software are still the exception rather than the rule.

Incentive schemes that encourage this kind of application (which might well involve private arrangements between Microsoft and developers, rather than public free-for-alls) are likely to be worth the time and expense. But a hundred bucks an app? It's the worst of all worlds. It makes the platform look weak, and it encourages all the wrong developers.

My solution is to reward for higher rated apps. $1k or $10k for 3.5/4 star apps with a minimum number of downloads over a certain time period.

Every metric will be gamed by scammers. Ratings are already broken for apps that don't attract a wide audience already, where a few friends, family members, and fake accounts can easily skew the numbers.

BlackBerry also did something similar. They offered 100$ per app that you submitted, with a max of 500$. They had special weekends for Android devs, just to get them to submit their Android version to BB's appstore. They also had similar rewards for real native apps. It's the reason why they now boast of their high numbers of apps.

I have considered trying to get my Android app working, but the BB emulator was such a mess that I didn't try it.

The Windows Store is certainly short on apps, but that's not a simple numbers game. It's short on good apps. There are some small positive signs—a week ago an official Twitter app was released and it's really rather nice—but well-designed, useful pieces of software are still the exception rather than the rule.

Oh boy, I wonder what they'll do with their new found fortune.

Seriously though, it looks like they are gaming their own system to pump up their numbers. Who on earth would be motivated by $100 to produce an app. Their problem is the lack of momentum and they need to start somewhere. I doubt it will work but the best of luck to them.

I just checked the price to buy the full version (they call it "ultimate") of visual studio:

* $19,274 upfront* * $6,158 per year after that*

What are they offering me $100 for? Seriously?

There are cheaper versions but they are all missing features.

For price comparison, Apple provides their full dev software for free and charges between $100 and $300 per year for the service stuff (gives you access to the app store, free software licenses to various non-development tools (eg, download every version of Mac OS X including upcoming beta versions), various non-app store deployment options, etc).

* those prices are australian dollars... at current exchange rates, it's around $19,990 in USD.

I just checked the price to buy the full version (they call it "ultimate") of visual studio:

The free Express version is fairly good, quite frankly. And if you're a student, you can get the Professional version for free via DreamSpark... and students at a school with DreamSpark Premium can get the Ultimate version of Visual Studio for free.

Peter, I really can't dispute anything you wrote here. What I will say is that the apps offered by Microsoft - OneNote, MS Office, Skydrive, etc. - are universally outstanding. For productivity, they easily beat anything I ever had on Android, and I find myself using the same apps on my iPad, too. Even the browser is great, although I would prefer a mobile version of Firefox.

I have Angry Birds and some Xbox app style games to keep me occupied when bored. I know the Windows Phone store is lagging behind the rivals in quantity of apps...but in terms of providing useful tools for me to go about my day, I am completely satisfied. I don't care about Facebook - and indeed don't want it data mining on my phone - so I'm content to leave that stuff behind.

No question that Microsoft needs to get competitive on the app front if they're to attract a wider audience. No debate. But I wanted to at least offer my perspective: I've used and owned all the phones, and my current WP8 device is by far my favorite.

I can kind of see where Microsoft is coming from, a reward can get people onboard even thought it's completely not worth it (like SpaceX, a million dollars was never going to fund anything).

This means that if someone writes an app, they at least get some beer money. And it gets people started, they might try make a crappy app and expand it to a better app when they realise there's money to be made. Or it means to break even is $100 closer (which for really small projects might be worth while).

Plus it's free marketing. How hard would it be to hammer out a quick app and get $100? Hmm, I'll check. So the tools, the ecosystem, everything winds up getting discussed on sites like Ars.

At the worst, Microsoft gets inflated numbers. There's no reason for them not to do this, so they are.

The article is SPOT on! The $100 bribe will get them a bunch of worthless apps. You aren't going to see Tivo or Instagram, Comcast or Redbox being influenced AT ALL by this offer, only the starving student/developers!

MS needs to face facts...no one wants their crappy phones! (well, except apparently, the Italians...go figure) No one likes "Metro", Windows 8 or Windows RT...except for the Microsoft employees being paid to like it! (sometimes not even then!)

I wonder how many more painful months of failure they are going to endure before pulling the plug? Another year? Two?

The other thing I wonder is how long Ballmer has before the shareholders storm Redmond with pitchforks and torches!

The article is SPOT on! The $100 bribe will get them a bunch of worthless apps. You aren't going to see Tivo or Instagram, Comcast or Redbox being influenced AT ALL by this offer, only the starving student/developers!

MS needs to face facts...no one wants their crappy phones! (well, except apparently, the Italians...go figure) No one likes "Metro", Windows 8 or Windows RT...except for the Microsoft employees being paid to like it! (sometimes not even then!)

I wonder how many more painful months of failure they are going to endure before pulling the plug? Another year? Two?

The other thing I wonder is how long Ballmer has before the shareholders storm Redmond with pitchforks and torches!

1) If you see above, there are others - myself including - who do like Windows Phones. I actually love my device.

2) Your silly comment actually swayed me away from your point, because influencing students would be a great thing. Of course $100 won't influence big corporations. But Facebook was started by a student. If this gets college and high school students motivated to be creative in the WP store, who knows what cool ideas they may come up with.

I just checked the price to buy the full version (they call it "ultimate") of visual studio:

* $19,274 upfront* * $6,158 per year after that*

What are they offering me $100 for? Seriously?

There are cheaper versions but they are all missing features.

You really don't need VS Ultimate to write a decent app. What features are you missing?

Microsoft's comparison mentions things like:

* Reliably capture and reproduce bugs found during manual and exploratory testing to eliminate "no repro" bugs * Understand the dependencies and relationships in your code through visualization * Visualize the impact of a change, or a potential change in your code * Collect and analyze runtime diagnostic data from production systems

I don't know which ones of those I "need", but the point is Visual Studio is much more expensive than this per-app bounty. If they're trying to convince people to jump in and write a simple app (there is no way I'm going to spend six months writing a complex app for $2,000), then they have to drop the price of their development tools.

The cheapest version (which is something like $800 I think?) does seem to be missing required features, so I'd certainly be spending more than that if I decided to give Windows Phone development a try (I have written a few iPhone apps by the way... some of them took years of development and are pretty cool if I do say so myself - they've even won a handful of mid-profile innovation awards).

Marketplace search on WP is awful. Terrible. Hopeless. Woeful. Abyssmal. Etc. The last thing it needs is more I Cloned A Sample App.

Blackberry has the right idea; quality as a metric. I'd rather there were A Few Good Apps rather than this cruise to a gazillion crappy apps.

And it's not like vendors seem to care. Take, oh, Draw Something on Windows Phone for instance. Rarely have you seen such a buggy app (you can't play with people on different platforms, the tiles don't match up). It should be pulled from the marketplace

Speaking of marketplace: country by country fragmentation. I have to browse apps on the US WP marketplace to get a fair assessment of quality, frequently there aren't enough reviews in the Australian WP marketplace to have much statistical relevance. I expect that's the case in most other countrys' marketplaces, too. Combine the reviews, already! Or at least have language-by-language marketplaces.

I just checked the price to buy the full version (they call it "ultimate") of visual studio:

The free Express version is fairly good, quite frankly. And if you're a student, you can get the Professional version for free via DreamSpark... and students at a school with DreamSpark Premium can get the Ultimate version of Visual Studio for free.

That's nice... But I'm not a student, I'm a professional with close to a decade of experience. Presumably I'm exactly the type of person microsoft is trying to attract to the platform.

I don't want the "express" tools, I want a proper development environment. It needs to be at least on-parity with what Apple is offering now for $100 to $300 per year.

I like windows 8 and love windows phone. But one of the things keeping me from switching to either platform is that many apps, especially the ones I wrote myself so I could use them, do not run on windows.

MS is putting the money in the wrong people's hands. Give the *end users* "free money" to spend in the app store.

This creates incentive for application developers to support the platform ("look at all that money that's about to get injected into the ecosystem - if I write a quality app, I can get a large chunk of that!"), maintains a quality bar, and lets MS evangelize such-and-such in sales on the platform to attract more developers.

I'm *not* looking forward to the deluge of crapware that's about to flood the store. And further bury any gems.

There's so much MS is doing wrong with mobile. And this is just one example.

Why don't they have a tiered system per quarter?Most popular App: $1Mil2nd: 500K3rd: 250K

Most popular game: $500K2nd most: $250K3rd: $100K

Sounds like Glengarry Glen Ross:We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? [Holds up prize] Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

That's nice... But I'm not a student, I'm a professional with close to a decade of experience. Presumably I'm exactly the type of person microsoft is trying to attract to the platform.

I don't want the "express" tools, I want a proper development environment. It needs to be at least on-parity with what Apple is offering now for $100 to $300 per year.

Might I ask what features Express lacks that makes it unpalatable for you?

The only reasons I purchase myself and my devs "full" versions of Visual Studio is plugin support and mixing multiple languages in the same project. (And access to the ATL... but that's a separate rant).

If it wasn't for that, I'd be content using Express for all my Windows development needs.

...well-designed, useful pieces of software are still the exception rather than the rule.

Peter, that sums it up. Microsoft doesn't need a gazillion apps. It needs one or two dozen apps that are aesthetically pleasant and that either educate or entertain.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is probably (?) the only company with the resources to write these apps. I've had my Windows 8 phone since it came out. I love it but I spend 90% of the time in the browser or Office. If the other users are anything like me the "Write an app Get 100 Bucks" drive won't go very far. I plan to write an app or two but I'll do it for fun. The $100 doesn't do anything for me and I seriously doubt it is the right kind of incentive, as you eloquently said.

Peter, I really can't dispute anything you wrote here. What I will say is that the apps offered by Microsoft - OneNote, MS Office, Skydrive, etc. - are universally outstanding. For productivity, they easily beat anything I ever had on Android, and I find myself using the same apps on my iPad, too. Even the browser is great, although I would prefer a mobile version of Firefox.

I disagree. The options on most of MS's Metro apps are poor. The Camera app has virtually no options, Photos gives little or no editing power (unlike iOS and Android), and you can't even adjust the picture size (automatically or manually) before publishing to Skydrive. It's actually MS's own apps that have left me doubting Windows 8 and the Market. They should at least match iOS and Android equivalents, and they don't. If MS isn't willing to do that work, why would I expect it from 3rd party devs?

I do see potential in MS's apps, but many feel incomplete or lacking, when they needed to be top notch at launch.

* Reliably capture and reproduce bugs found during manual and exploratory testing to eliminate "no repro" bugs * Understand the dependencies and relationships in your code through visualization * Visualize the impact of a change, or a potential change in your code * Collect and analyze runtime diagnostic data from production systems

Yeah, you'll need those features to debug your weather app. And xcode has all these features of course?